After the second hottest year on record globally, the hottest year on record in Australia, our second hottest summer ever after 2018-19, an unprecedentedly catastrophic summer of bushfires and record-breaking Arctic and Antarctic temperatures, Labor has opted to, in effect, surrender on climate to the denialists of the Coalition.
Anthony Albanese’s Press Club speech today — liberally distributed, as usual, to media outlets a day ahead — abandons even fifth-best policy positions on climate in favour of offering the government a chance to establish a bipartisan energy policy.
By abandoning any interest in a National Energy Guarantee, Anthony Albanese will position Labor as weaker on climate action than Malcolm Turnbull, who at least sought to include both energy security and emissions reduction within his energy policy framework before another right-wing/Murdoch putsch forced him out.
Albanese’s bottom lines for a bipartisan policy are that it be scalable, so that Labor can embrace stronger targets than the Coalition’s unachievable (on current policies) 26-28% on 2005 reduction targets, that the Coalition’s infantile “soil magic” Emissions Reduction Fund be discontinued, and that nuclear power remains off the table.
However, Labor is happy to accept carbon capture and storage — which like nuclear power suffers from massive cost blowouts and long delays, but unlike nuclear power has never actually been shown to work.
The problem with the “scalability” argument that is that, ultimately, all policies are scalable — it just depends on the cost.
For example, when the Coalition first committed to the 26-28% target under Tony Abbott, the Australian Industry Group, not exactly known for its radical climate activism, calculated that achieving such a target with the Coalition’s Direct Action policy (then, and now, the only climate policy the government has) would cost taxpayers between $100 and $250 billion.
Given that the Coalition shuns all forms of climate-based regulation, let alone a carbon price, taxpayer funding is the only remaining mechanism for achieving emissions reductions, either through directly funding emissions abatement undertakings by business and the community (with or without the kind of dodgy brothers accounting that the Emissions Reduction Fund comes with around sequestration), or by incentivising investment in emissions reduction technologies like renewable energy and storage infrastructure.
In the Coalition’s hands, direct funding ends up being treated as a pork barrel, handed to key supporter groups like farmers, or to its donors.
By accepting — though not proposing to fund — CCS, Albanese can offer the coal wing of Labor the pretence that coal mining can continue as a legitimate industry on a warming planet, even as the ruined communities continue to clear up the wreckage from the summer from hell. In doing so, he’s peddling in the same fiction as the government — that CCS can ever make a meaningful contribution to reducing emissions. It cannot.
That all said, ordinarily, the offer of genuine bipartisanship on a key area of long-term infrastructure investment would be a sound one.
Investors need policy certainty in energy, something they haven’t had since Labor lost government. But there can be no bipartisanship with the Coalition on anything to do with climate. It is run by climate denialists, and any attempt to take meaningful climate action will lead to a repeat of 2018.
As Malcolm Turnbull correctly put it, these people operate like terrorists, intent on blowing up their own government, with the support of News Corp, if anyone tries to address climate change. You can’t do any sort of deal with them. That merely rewards terrorists.
A two horse race – and they’re both running dead.
I think the problem is that Labor may come up with the best climate policy ever known to man, but as soon as they lose power that policy would be torn down.
Terrorists has a good ring to it but gangsters is more accurate.
Support for CCS really is the last straw. It doesn’t work and never will because it can’t. Instead of embracing it a smart opposition would set about demolishing its credibility and tying that to its proponents.
However the duplicity involving continued support for coal remains. What’s so special about coal mining jobs ? Possibly their status as being well paid unionised jobs. Why can’t those miners mine something else ? It’s common for people who’ve been in a job or industry a long time to think they’ve earned a special right to keep doing so despite reality often ending up otherwise. Ask millions of former employees in former industries.
“What’s so special about coal mining jobs?” They’re in states with loads of marginal seats.
Coal mining jobs are concentrated in marginal Queensland Federal seats. That’s what makes them special. Unlike Ford, Holden and Toyota factory workers who were in SA and Vic.
This move shows the ALP have still learnt nothing from their 2019 election defeat. More progressive ALP voters know it’s impossible to have both an effective climate change policy and keep coal mines open and so are voting green or other. Those who are intent on waging war against climate change won’t vote ALP anyway. Those who work in mining who understand the need to move away from coal don’t trust the ALP (and are egged on by News Corp). So just like 2019 they are trying to have their cake and eat it too but will get neither. History shows for a progressive party to gain power in Australia (and keep it) they need to be consistent with their rhetoric over a lengthy period of time. Doing this is vitally important in the current climate because if you keep saying something for long enough people believe it. So to the ALP – go away and come up with a plan to transit away from coal (but make sure you consult coal mining communities in good faith) and stick to it no matter how much News Corp attacks you.
The problem is not with the policy as such, it is the lack of a coherent explanation of the difference between mining thermal coal and mining coking coal.
Thermal coal mining should be terminal and Coking coal has a shelf life of about 50 to 60 years until hydrogen technology gets there.
The sad thing is that Labor stupidly managed to get itself entangled in the Adani disaster and doesn’t know how to get out of it.
The CFMMEU thought jobs and supported Adani and then realized an automated mine that takes market share from full staffed mines is not a good bet for their members.
Unfortunately I have to say it was the Qld mining seats, with the help of the spin wizard of the Joh era Clive Palmer ensured that the mediocrity we have today as our third term federal government is our responsibility.
This is what happens when people believe Face Book.
If you care about your kids and grandkids the future of society in general the only option ‘left’ is NOT to vote labor or liberal. There are other options…..